Preserving the Union Spirit

“Fathers with their daughters, mothers with their sons
Teach the younger generation about the battles lost and won . . .
We are union, and we share that common thread
We are union, in our hearts and in our head.”

From “We are Union”
by Kelly Edington

By word and by example, AFSCME members are keeping alive the importance of trade unionism.

When they finish this century’s chapter on thegrowth of the labor movement, they’ll have to include some hard statistics:

In the 1930s, union membership spiked upward, growing from 3.4 million to more than 10 million members. “Union density” — the percentage of workers on payrolls who were unionized — peaked in the post World War II era, when more than one out of three workers was a union member.

And it was more or less downhill after that.

From a high of 20.2 million in 1978, union membership had fallen to 16.2 million 20 years later.

AFSCME, with a lot of effort, bucked the trend. The collective bargaining laws for public employees that AFSCME helped enact enabled some 4 million workers to throw in their lot
with organized labor during that 20-year period.

AFSCME’s “green wave” gathered force in the mid-70s and broke the million member mark around 1978. The union currently represents some 1.4 million workers.

“AFSCME is a very, very strong element in a movement that had become weakened over time,” says Prof. Jack Metzgar, of Roosevelt University in Chicago.

Part of that is due to the institution’s commitment to organizing, both internal and external. Part of that is due to local programs that educate and enlighten.

But what energizes the “union family” over generations is very often what’s passed on first hand from father to daughter, and from mother to son.

OLYMPIA, WASH.

In Washington, D.C., being “up on the Hill” is usually a reference to working among the power brokers in the halls of Congress. When Willis and Tim Bennett say they’re “on the hill,” it’s to clear snow from the Chinook Pass in Washington state — in time for the July 4th weekend. The father and son team work for the state Department of Transportation.

Willie, an equipment mechanic for the department, has been a union member for more than 20 years. Tim, an equipment maintenance technician, has belonged for a year and a half. Both are members of Local 378 (Council 28).

Like a lot of families with strong union ties, pride in the union was nurtured at the kitchen table. “My dad was a member of the Boilermakers union. He was very proud of that,” recalls Willie.

When he started with the department in 1965, the mechanics belonged to a different union, but voted to affiliate with AFSCME to strengthen their voice. “We didn’t have any rights. ... We didn’t have any medical. It seemed like we were taking it in the shorts all the time.”

Willie serves on his local’s executive board, and participates as much as he can. “A couple of times I’ve been out in my car and I’d see a line of picketers and I’d jump out to picket with them.”

He’s challenged his son to become a more active union member, usually with friendly jibes. “He said this is the best job he’s ever had. So I keep throwing it at him, ‘Then you need to protect that job.’”

Tim notes that his father doesn’t suffer unfair criticism of the union lightly. “The guys know that if you talk bad about the union, you push Willie’s buttons,” his son laughs. “Nobody ever really gives him a hard time about it. He’s a big guy.”

He’s especially determined that new hires get straight information about the union, Tim observes. He remembered his dad standing up to a supervisor who made an anti-union remark at a safety meeting “He called the guy on it, and the guy had to back down.”

Last year, father and son took part in a rally for “6767,” referring to the number of the state bill to determine classifications for salary adjustments.

Make that “father, son and grandson.”

Tim’s son, Will Timothy, 5, also came along. “It’s important that people see that state workers have families, too,” Tim believes.

And it’s important that families learn where they got their voice.

The boy “thought the rally was great. We walked up to the governor’s office.” Gov. Gary Locke was in a meeting, but a press aide came out to give the young visitor a photograph and hear his message. Will Timothy was thrilled. “He had a chance to say his piece, so he was happy.”

“He says what’s on his mind,” Tim laughs. “The governor’s lucky he was in a meeting.”

MEMPHIS

It’s a sunny Saturday in June, and a festival is in full swing along Beale Street. Like a lot of young men his age, Marcus Hunt, 21, could be part of the party scene. Instead, he’s indoors with his dad, Melvin, in a meeting of Local 1733, learning how to be a stronger union member.

Both Melvin and Marcus work for the city of Memphis Department of Public Works — Melvin for 29 years, Marcus for the past seven months as a part-timer.

Melvin recalls that he was just his son’s age — 21 — when he showed up at the Memphis sanitation department in 1970 looking for a chance to work on the crew. He joined the union right off. “I’ve always been supportive of it. I’d worked at several jobs before that never had a union. You never had a voice. They’d tell you where to go and that was it. Nobody to argue for you or anything.”

Melvin joined the union at an historic time in AFSCME’s history: the aftermath of the 65-day sanitation workers’ recognition strike, during which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

The old-timers told him plenty about the way things were before the strike. The heavy leather tubs of garbage that the workers had to shoulder, for on average, about $70 a week. The fact that your job was absolutely at your boss’s whim.

“If somebody didn’t like the way you worked, they’d just tell you to go home. They’d hire somebody right off the street to take your place,” Melvin recalls.

In those days immediately following the strike, union support was widespread. It wasn’t unusual for there to be 100, maybe 150, workers turning out for a union meeting, Melvin recalled.

These days, not nearly that many workers turn out, though support for the local remains strong. (The local maintains the highest percentage of union membership of any AFSCME local in a right-to-work state.)

Early on, Melvin Hunt set an example for his young son about the value of collective bargaining. “‘The union is your backbone.’ That’s his favorite saying,” Marcus says.

And Marcus knows first hand what he means. Before going to work for the city, he worked for a start-up overnight delivery service that tried to take on powerhouse FedEx on its home turf by squeezing their own non-union employees. The employees there were desperately trying to unionize, he notes.

So the two men, father and son, get up at 5:30 each morning. They get to work 20 minutes early, to check out their truck before roll call. And, almost without fail, they reserve the third Saturday of each month to attend the local union meeting. “Your union is your voice,” Melvin Hunt tells his son. “Your union is your voice.”

BUFFALO, N.Y.

Bob Mootry was only about 9 or 10, but he knew what it meant when his mom, Elaine, had her suitcase packed: “She’d be off traveling on union work.” There would also be lots of phone calls, and a constant stream of paperwork, into their home in the suburbs of Buffalo.

He and his two siblings took it in stride. “We knew she was a union activist. She was always helping people, and the union activities were an extension of that.”

You might say Elaine Mootry’s unionism was forged in steel. Her grandfather, and seven of her uncles, worked in the steel mills. “Bethlehem Steel owned the house we rented. ... The company owned everything. ... When there was a strike, the town was so quiet.”

She joined the West Seneca Developmental Center, but “never intended” to be a union activist until she found herself embroiled in a conflict with a supervisor. “I was so aggravated I wrote a letter to my director, and he responded. I felt I might have a chance to make a difference.”

It wasn’t until 1978 when Bob went to work at West Seneca, where his mom worked as a mental hygiene therapist, that he got to see her in action: “She’d be in the laundry, where I worked, visiting workers, discussing time and attendance problems, safety conditions.”

The point of it came home to Bob the day he fought through a classic Western New York snowstorm to come to work. He was congratulating himself on having made it in (a lot of his co-workers didn’t) when the supervisor redlined him for being an hour and a half late. “I saw that as wrong. It really made me want to become more active.”

He credits his mother’s example as president of Local 425 of the Civil Service Employees Association/AFSCME Local 1000, and as a member of CSEA’s executive board as central to his commitment. She retired in 1996, but he remembers, “Whether she was sick or not, she always got herself together to go to work.”

Bob served as a steward at the developmental center and later the Buffalo Psychiatric Center, where he transferred in 1985. He worked in a variety of union positions there and is now president of Local 403. Mootry has two daughters, 19 and 14, and the irony wasn’t lost on him when he would hear them ask, “Dad, why are your bags packed again?”

He’ll always answer in terms of simple justice, terms any kid can understand: “Doing union work. Helping people. It’s what I love.”

By Chris Dodd

LABOR DAY

Labor Day — the holiday set aside to recognize America’s workers — is acknowledged to be the brainchild of one of those workers.

But which union that worker belonged to is the subject of some debate.

Peter McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, first suggested a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

Others contend that Matthew Maguire, of the International Association of Machinists, proposed the holiday while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. The CLU celebrated the first Labor Day on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882. The idea spread to other cities and states. Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September a legal holiday in 1894.